A 6-year-old Edina girl remained hospitalized in serious condition Wednesday after an unusual accident in which several feet of her intestine were pulled out by the suction of a swimming pool drain.

Abigail Taylor was injured Friday in the wading pool at the Minneapolis Golf Club in St. Louis Park and taken to Children's Hospital for surgery.

"It's a horrible, life-altering injury," said Robert Bennett, the attorney for Abigail's parents, Scott and Kathryn Taylor.

Bennett said doctors had to perform surgery to remove the part of Abigail's intestine that remained following the accident. He said it is likely that she will have to be fed intravenously for the rest of her life.

... In a message posted on the Caring Bridge, a nonprofit Internet site that offers free Web pages to families of people recovering from illness or injuries, the Taylors said the protective cover on the pool's drain had come off.

If so, the scenario of the injury fits a pattern that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission warned about in a 2005 report, "Guidelines for Entrapment Hazards: Making Pools and Spas Safer."

According to the report, if a child sits on an open drain, the suction, which can reach several hundred pounds per square inch, can rupture the rectum and eviscerate the child in a matter of seconds.

There have been three such incidents since 1990. The most recent was two years ago when a 3-year-old was disemboweled by a hot tub drain.

None of those accidents was fatal, although in the same time span 13 people, most of them children, drowned after being caught in underwater drains.

That poor girl. Next time we go to the kids pool, I'm going to scout out the drain locations and warn Belle to stay away from them. Sources in a follow-up story, say this kind of accident is "improbable" because of modern safety precautions. The problem is more likely to occur at older pools that have not been renovated, they say.

However, the pool where this accident happened was built in 2003, had more than one drain, and an automatic shut-off valve just in case.